Scotland with a Pinch of Westeros? The Case of Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth

The paper discusses the resemblance between Shakespeare’s play Macbeth and its cinematic adaptation directed by Justin Kurzel (2015) with respect to the image of Scotland in the geographical and historical sense. To this end, tools derived from translation studies are employed, such as the notion of intersemiotic translation, interpretive resemblance and interpretants. It is argued that alterations introduced in the adaptation are motivated by psychological reality and coherence of the plot, making the representation of medieval Scotland believable. In this respect, Kurzel’s production differs from many other cinematic versions of Macbeth, exploiting mostly the universality of the crime and madness motifs.